To: lira-kin@postofc.corp.sgi.com Subject: Rubbing Ink Date: Mon, 02 Dec 96 10:09:41 -0800 [This was actually written near the beginning of November... I'm going to try and trickle out the accounts of my November adventures a bit at a time, and, yeah, this includes the October trip to New Mexico for Rostyfest, so it's not all in time sequence. This was written on the 5th of November. I got another kick in the pants, i.e. another reason to think about what I wanted out of my life... -plr] Life has been... crazy lately, to say the least. We've been running full out at work to get a release done. I'm reving up to do training in Europe for the new products and finishing up the work I've been doing for the last year and a half. The master bedroom has been open to the wind and the rain and it's been raining every day. David's gotten most of the walls up as I leave, and should be mostly done with sinks, shower, and toilet by the time I get back. There's several documents that have to be written for the beta release. I've also spent a quarter of the days of the last few months away from home, traveling here and there and everywhere. John's been gone on spot business travel and we've traveled to see family and take a few breathes in Albuquerque, San Jose, and Vancouver. In the midst of the chaos and stress I've taken some time one or two times a week to sit down with brush and paper, ink stone with a teaspoon of clear water in its well and a stick of ink. Then deliberately and gently I dip the stick in the water and start rubbing gentle circles on the surface of the stone. Rubbing harder doesn't speed anything up, and speed isn't the point. It's a time to breath and think, and watch the slow bloom of blackness within the clarity of the water. The ink slowly thickens with the gentle motions. It usually takes about fifteen to twenty minutes to make ink of the proper consistency. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to think, twenty minutes to stop, twenty minutes to breath slow and slower and relax into a task that demands nothing but my own ease and my own desire. I enjoy that time and use it to dream, to think, to wonder and to figure things out that I don't usually take the time to do. One of the things I realized as I thought over the ten goal idea was that I have very few reachable or doable goals to my life. There aren't that many things that I would do and be done with a goal. Most of the 'things' that I want to do are just slow, constant improvements, things that I wish to simply be better at over time. Improving at soccer, exploring the world, getting better at sharing those explorations, always writing, always dreaming, always improving and always trying to do better at things rather than reaching a particular goal. There are some steps that are both within reach and within my desire and they all overlap. In a lot of ways my life and my goals are like my Chinese calligraphy. I don't think I'll ever be perfect at calligraphy, and I don't really intend for it to be 'of professional quality'. I just want to get better at it, piece by piece, bit by bit, stroke by stroke. I don't understand it all, yet, or even most of it, but I figure as I keep working at it, that I'll pick it up and get better and I'll learn as I go. It suffers when I try to control it too finely and is best done with strokes that are simply done without too much thought or agonizing over how they 'ought' to be. They require a knowledge of the basics of how the strokes go together and why; but within the framework of those basics there is a lot of expression that can be done and is better done with the foundation of that framework. It also involves a better understanding of the Chinese language and a better understanding of how to do what I want to do with a paint brush. It's a lot like how I play my soccer games. My goal isn't winning, it's playing, enjoying the play, getting better, in some ways, and always to learn. Not improving in order to get into a particular league, but improving my own joy in the game no matter what my skills are. The ten that I came up with are something like the following: 1) To grow, nurture, and take nurture from the relationships that I have, and to grow with them. Recently I've realized that my relationships all have two essential ingredients: communication and joy in each others lives. In the short term that's everything from calling my parents more often to remembering to hug Fezzik every day to making sure that I make the time to talk with John and keeping up with my correspondents when I can. 2) To live up to my technical potential and keep creating tools that help others to create the electronics that give people tools to unleash their creativity in ways that have never been available before. With that is to learn and use the skills that I have to allow myself to organize a group to create something bigger than I might ever have created myself. 3) Keep creating shawls, always better than the one before. In the short term to build a sea-blue/green shawl that I've dreamed of but haven't made the time to design yet. I also have the fire yarn I'd spun years back and I want to create a shawl from it that's worthy of it's color. 4) Go to Europe, Australia and Alaska and keep exploring not only this world, but, if the opportunity ever opens up, other worlds as well. To beat the fear of new places that sometimes makes this really difficult. 5) To always better my soccer game, not just physically, but mentally. 6) Write and keep writing, always improving, always dreaming, and never regretting a lost story or dream, and, perhaps, writing to the point where I publish and keep publishing. 7) To learn music and hear something I created that I like and then to keep going with that. 8) Paint and learn how to watercolor and use the brush medium with Chinese calligraphy as well as pure graphics. 9) The process of parenthood is another lifetime kinda thing that keeps going past any particular or single goal. I'm not sure we're ready to start that any time soon, but it's a long term experience that intrigues me. 10) Finally, to increase my experiences with What Is rather than What I Fear. Because 10 times outta 10, what I fear isn't what's really out there. Or, as was said more plainly in 'Strictly Ballroom', "A life lived in fear is a life only half lived." I'm not really sure if #10 is first or last or the one that'll make all the others possible. Anyway... I guess those are the musing I've had as I sat down between long periods of on-the-edge insanity at work and play and putting our house back together. ----- Liralen Li | "Looking down on empty streets, all she can see are liralen@netcom.com | the dreams all made solid, are the dreams made real." aka Phyllis Rostykus | - "Mercy Street" by Peter Gabriel